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I'm a fourth year doctoral student in the Developmental Psychology program at the University of Southern California. I do research on the way that the environment interacts with biology in producing innate or learned behavior.
The Thoughtful Animal
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Child's Play
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- January 27, 2012
- 09:30 AM
- 120 views
Are Wallabies Left or Right Handed? Both! (Sometimes)
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
Which limb do you prefer? If you’re like most members of our species, you prefer your right hand for most tasks. If you’re like a smaller minority of our species, you might prefer your left hand. Very, very few of us are truly ambidextrous. Most of us have at least a minor preference for one [...]
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Giljov, A., Karenina, K., & Malashichev, Y. (2011) Limb preferences in a marsupial, Macropus rufogriseus: evidence for postural effect. Animal Behaviour. DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2011.11.031
- January 23, 2012
- 09:25 PM
- 171 views
Sharks With Friends
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
Many of us think of sharks as lone hunters. We imagine them spending most of their lives swimming alone, briefly seeking out the company of another shark for the purposes of reproduction, then going back to their solo ways. We also tend to think of sharks as dumb machines, capable of little more than hunting. [...]
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Mourier, J., Vercelloni, J., & Planes, S. (2011) Evidence of social communities in a spatially structured network of a free-ranging shark species. Animal Behaviour. DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2011.11.008
- January 5, 2012
- 04:26 PM
- 199 views
Polar Bears Say “Stay Away!”
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
It’s winter, and while Los Angeles has been unseasonably warm, I find my mind wandering to cooler things, like polar bears. In most zoos and animal parks, polar bears (ursus maritimus) attract such a disproportionate amount of attention that they are referred to in the industry as “charismatic megafauna,” or in other words, “really cool [...]
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Renner, M., & Kelly, A. (2006) Behavioral Decisions for Managing Social Distance and Aggression in Captive Polar Bears (Ursus maritimus). Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science, 9(3), 233-239. DOI: 10.1207/s15327604jaws0903_5
- December 25, 2011
- 11:00 AM
- 153 views
Rudolph Would Have Run Away From Santa
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
According to holiday lore, poor Rudolph was a victim of social exclusion because he was different from the rest of the reindeer. In a move that was lucky for nice (but not naughty) children everywhere, he was then approached by Santa, who asked him to guide the sleigh. Thereafter, according to traditional sources, all the [...]
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Reimers, E., Eftestol, S., & Colman, J. (2003) Behavior Responses of Wild Reindeer to Direct Provocation by a Snowmobile or Skier. The Journal of Wildlife Management, 67(4), 747. DOI: 10.2307/3802681
- December 22, 2011
- 10:30 AM
- 117 views
Cricket Fight Club: Winning Increases Aggression
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
It’s better than an ant farm. It’s more exciting than a flea circus. Welcome to Cricket Fight Club. The first rule of Cricket Fight Club is: you do not talk about Cricket Fight Club. The second rule of Cricket Fight Club is: you do not talk about Cricket Fight Club. In aggressive conflicts between individuals [...]
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Rillich, J., & Stevenson, P. (2011) Winning Fights Induces Hyperaggression via the Action of the Biogenic Amine Octopamine in Crickets. PLoS ONE, 6(12). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0028891
- December 19, 2011
- 09:30 AM
- 258 views
The Psychology of Dictatorship: Kim Jong-Il
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
As long as there have been political dictators, psychologists have been fascinated with them. While many psychologists try to understand what happens in normal, rational people that leads them to follow such clearly dangerous leaders, some psychologists have been more interested in characterizing the personality profiles of dictators themselves. After all, who hasn’t attempted an [...]
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Coolidge, F., & Segal, D. (2009) Is Kim Jong‐il like Saddam Hussein and Adolf Hitler? A personality disorder evaluation. Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression, 1(3), 195-202. DOI: 10.1080/19434470903017664
Coolidge, F., & Segal, D. (2007) Was Saddam Hussein Like Adolf Hitler? A Personality Disorder Investigation. Military Psychology, 19(4), 289-299. DOI: 10.1080/08995600701548221
Frederick L. Coolidge, Felicia L. Davis, & Daniel L. Segal. (2007) Understanding Madmen: A DSM-IV Assessment of Adolf Hitler. Individual Differences Research, 5(1), 30-43. info:/
- December 14, 2011
- 11:00 AM
- 298 views
Are Sheep Better at Botany than the US Government?
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
Botanically, a tomato is a fruit: a seed-bearing structure that grows from the flowering part of a plant. In 1893, however, the highest court in the land ruled in the case of Nix v. Hedden that the tomato was a vegetable, subject to vegetable import tariffs. Unfortunately, the vegetal confusion did not end in 1893. [...]
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Ginane C, & Dumont B. (2011) Do sheep (Ovis aries) categorize plant species according to botanical family?. Animal cognition, 14(3), 369-76. PMID: 21203791
- November 24, 2011
- 11:00 AM
- 288 views
Chicken Soup for the Lonely Soul: Why Comfort Food Works
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
My grandmother was born in Sobrance, in what was then called Czechoslovakia on November 5, 1930. She grew up in ten kilometers away, in a small town called Nagy-Muzsaly. Her father’s family were landowners, something that was very rare for Jewish families at the time, and they used that land to produce wine. My grandmother’s [...]
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Troisi JD, & Gabriel S. (2011) Chicken soup really is good for the soul: "comfort food" fulfills the need to belong. Psychological science, 22(6), 747-53. PMID: 21537054
- November 14, 2011
- 10:00 AM
- 259 views
If Chickens Like Consonant Music, Will They Hate B.B. King? That’s Not Even the Right Question to Ask
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
Neuroscience Can’t Explain Wagner (or B.B. King) writes Christopher Shea on the Ideas Market blog at the Wall Street Journal, arguing against the claims that are made in my post from last week about day-old chickens preferring consonant music. I find two problems with his argument: the first concerning methodology, and the second concerning what [...]
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Chiandetti C, & Vallortigara G. (2011) Chicks like consonant music. Psychological science, 22(10), 1270-3. PMID: 21934134
- November 9, 2011
- 10:00 AM
- 326 views
Day Old Chickens Prefer The Same Music That You Do
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
You might have more in common with the chicken on your plate than you realize. Sure, you’ve also got two thighs, two legs, two breasts, and two wings (sort of). But new research suggests that chickens might like to rock out to the same tunes you’ve got on your iPod. The kinds of sounds that [...]
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Chiandetti C, & Vallortigara G. (2011) Chicks like consonant music. Psychological science, 22(10), 1270-3. PMID: 21934134
- October 31, 2011
- 03:02 PM
- 243 views
Real Life Werewolves? Dog Bites and Full Moons
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
Happy Halloween! I decided to revise and repost this piece from November 1, 2010, on dog bites, full moons, and confirmation bias. Click the archives icon to see the original post. Our story begins in March 2000, when Dr. Simon Chapman and colleagues from the University of Sydney published a paper in which they assessed [...]
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Chapman S, & Morrell S. (2000) Barking mad? another lunatic hypothesis bites the dust. BMJ (Clinical research ed.), 321(7276), 1561-3. PMID: 11124174
- August 25, 2011
- 09:30 AM
- 423 views
Four Loko Is Just Like The Copenhagen Philharmonic
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
Four Loko was a fruit-flavored, caffeinated, alcoholic drink that was invented by three Ohio State University students in 2005. Following a series of accidents, injuries, and deaths on college campuses and elsewhere, most of the discussion about the harmful effects of the drink centered on the combination of caffeine and alcohol. “Some have claimed,” writes McMaster University psychologist Shepard Siegel in the latest issue of Perspectives on Psychological Science, “that the stimulant [the caffeine -JGG] masked the intoxicating effects of alcohol, thus encouraging excess alcohol consumption.”
The FDA declared that it would be illegal to add caffeine to alcoholic beverages, and on November 18, 2010, sent a letter to several companies including the manufacturers of Four Loko saying that such beverages were unsafe and could lead to “hazardous and life-threatening situations.” Within fifteen days, the beverage manufacturers had removed all the caffeine from their alcoholic products.
Case closed? That Four Loko was especially dangerous is clear. But was caffeine the culprit? Siegel doesn’t think so.... Read more »
Siegel, S. (2011) The Four-Loko Effect. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6(4), 357-362. DOI: 10.1177/1745691611409243
McCusker CG, & Brown K. (1990) Alcohol-predictive cues enhance tolerance to and precipitate "craving" for alcohol in social drinkers. Journal of studies on alcohol, 51(6), 494-9. PMID: 2270057
Siegel S. (1976) Morphine analgesic tolerance: its situation specificity supports a Pavlovian conditioning model. Science (New York, N.Y.), 193(4250), 323-5. PMID: 935870
- August 18, 2011
- 10:00 AM
- 393 views
Mathematics, Cities, and Brains: What Can A Highway Engineer Learn From A Neuroscientist?
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
Lots of networks have been compared to urban systems. Remember when the internet was referred to as the information superhighway? And high school biology teachers have been comparing the workings of cells to city operations for decades. To what extent, though, might a brain be like a city?... Read more »
Changizi, M., & Destefano, M. (2009) Common scaling laws for city highway systems and the mammalian neocortex. Complexity. DOI: 10.1002/cplx.20288
- August 8, 2011
- 10:00 AM
- 460 views
Memory: I Don’t Think It Means What You Think It Means. An Interview with Dan Simons.
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
Do you believe that memory works sort of like a video camera, faithfully recording your experiences so that you can go back later and revisit those memories, captured in pristine condition? Do you believe that if something unexpected walked into your field of vision you’d notice? Can forgotten memories be recalled through hypnosis?... Read more »
Simons, D., & Chabris, C. (2011) What People Believe about How Memory Works: A Representative Survey of the U.S. Population. PLoS ONE, 6(8). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0022757
- August 3, 2011
- 11:00 AM
- 687 views
Humans Aren’t The Only Ones Who Need To Avoid The Heat: How Birds Avoid Scrambled Eggs
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
July was the hottest month ever recorded in Washington, D.C., in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and in Wichita Falls, Kansas, as measured by the National Weather Service. In fact, the NWS has issued an “excessive heat warning” for a huge swath of middle America extending from northwestern Illinois and central Iowa in the north to central Texas in the south. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warn each year that people can easily become ill or even die from extreme heat: from 1979 to 2003, 8,015 people died due to excessive heat exposure. In fact, more people in the US died from heat exposure during that 24-year period than from hurricanes, lightening, tornadoes, floods, and earthquakes combined.... Read more »
Monif AlRashidi, András Kosztolányi, Mohammed Shobrak, Clemens Küpper, & Tamás Székely. (2011) Parental cooperation in an extreme hot environment: natural behaviour and experimental evidence. Animal Behaviour, 235-243. info:/10.1016/j.anbehav.2011.04.019
- July 12, 2011
- 04:00 PM
- 383 views
Rats, Bees, and Brains: The Death of the “Cognitive Map”
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
Humans, just like all other animals, face the same problem every day: how do we get around the world? I don’t mean how do we walk, swim, crawl, or fly. I mean, how do we navigate? If I leave in search of food, how do I find my way back home? ... Read more »
Tolman, E. (1948) Cognitive maps in rats and men. Psychological Review, 55(4), 189-208. DOI: 10.1037/h0061626
O'Keefe J, & Speakman A. (1987) Single unit activity in the rat hippocampus during a spatial memory task. Experimental brain research. Experimentelle Hirnforschung. Experimentation cerebrale, 68(1), 1-27. PMID: 3691688
Whishaw IQ. (1991) Latent learning in a swimming pool place task by rats: evidence for the use of associative and not cognitive mapping processes. The Quarterly journal of experimental psychology. B, Comparative and physiological psychology, 43(1), 83-103. PMID: 2017576
Collett, T., & Rees, J. (1997) View-based navigation in Hymenoptera: multiple strategies of landmark guidance in the approach to a feeder. Journal of Comparative Physiology A: Sensory, Neural, and Behavioral Physiology, 181(1), 47-58. DOI: 10.1007/s003590050092
Simons, D., & Wang, R. (1998) Perceiving Real-World Viewpoint Changes. Psychological Science, 9(4), 315-320. DOI: 10.1111/1467-9280.00062
Epstein R, & Kanwisher N. (1998) A cortical representation of the local visual environment. Nature, 392(6676), 598-601. PMID: 9560155
- June 23, 2011
- 10:30 AM
- 883 views
From the Archives: What Can 3D Movies Teach Us About How Ants Smell?
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
A version of this post was originally published on my Wordpress blog on March 15, 2010. Click the archives image to see the original post.
Most animals, at some point in their day-to-day lives, face the same problem. After they've gone out in search of food, they need to find their way home. But some of the places like where various critters live lack any real visual landmarks, like the open ocean or wide expanses of desert. Instead of relying on vision, some animals have developed the ability to use olfactory (scent-related) cues to aid in navigation. Seabirds can detect subtle changes in the smell of plankton in the air over hundreds of kilometers, and pigeons seem to use olfactory cues for finding their way home. It is known that some insects follow their noses (so to speak) to find food or a suitable mate. But Kathrin Steck, Marcus Knaden, and Bill S. Hansson of the Max-Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology wondered if the desert ants of Tunisia might use olfactory cues for homing.
It turns out that despite the visually featureless landscape, the salt pans of Tunisia actually have scent-related features. Variations in soil composition, breaks in the salt, and dead plants, all contribute different odors to the landscape. Do ants use the olfactory information in finding their way back to the entrance of their nests?
The researchers isolated four odor-producing compounds from various objects found in the vicinity of the ants nest. The first order of business was to verify that the odors were not particularly repulsive or attractive to the ants. The ants were then trained to forage for food in an 8 meter long trough, with the end of the trough that had been baited with food always downwind from the nest's entrance. The experimenters applied one of the odors to the floor at the nest entrance, and re-applied the odor every 20 minutes, to ensure that the scent remained stable over time.
Would the ants learn to associate the specific odor with their nests? They tested them in troughs that contained (1) the same odor, (2) a different odor, (3) a mixture of four odors including the trained one, and (4) no odor at all.
Indeed, the ants learned to associate the specific odor they had been trained on with the nest entrance. They did the best under condition 1. And, they were able to pick out the trained odor from among the collection of four odors in the third condition. They were slightly less successful under condition 3 than condition 1, but way more successful than under conditions 2 or 4. In this figure, the trained odor condition is on the top, then the four odors condition, then the control condition is on the bottom. Each one is statistically significantly different from the others. The closer to the zero-point, the closer to home the ants wound up.
Pretty cool. But we're not done yet. Oh no. First we put ants on stilts. Then we cut off their legs to create stumps. We blindfolded them and trapped them under boxes. But we have not yet antennectomized the ants. Until now.
What's an antennectomy, you ask? I'll tell you. Ants have two antennae. If you cut one (or both) of them off, you have performed an antennectomy. What are antennae used for? Smelling, of course.
So, think of it as a nose job for an ant.
Its a good thing ants don't care much about their appearance. So much harder to perform a nose job if you've got two independent organs. "Doc, my one antenna is LONGER and THICKER than the other, and it's HUMILIATING!" Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...... Read more »
Steck, K., Hansson, B., & Knaden, M. (2009) Smells like home: Desert ants, Cataglyphis fortis, use olfactory landmarks to pinpoint the nest. Frontiers in Zoology, 6(1), 5. DOI: 10.1186/1742-9994-6-5
Steck, K., Knaden, M., & Hansson, B. (2010) Do desert ants smell the scenery in stereo?. Animal Behaviour. DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2010.01.011
- June 16, 2011
- 11:00 AM
- 591 views
Fido Might Not Know What You Do and Do Not See
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
You've probably had a conversation that goes something like this:
Person A: "My dog is sooooo amazing!"
You: "I mean, dogs are awesome and all, but what's so amazing about this particular dog?"
Person A: "He just understands me. It's like he knows what I'm thinking and what I need."
You: "Do you think he's just maybe responding contingently do your overt displays of emotion?"
Person A: "Listen, man, I'm telling you: my dog can read my mind!"
No matter on which side of this sort of argument you tend to fall, the question of whether or not domestic dogs can read human minds is an interesting and important one. More specifically, do dogs have a theory of mind? Can they take the perspective of a human?
Dogs show a wide range of "human-like" social behaviors. They respond appropriately to human body language and to verbal commands, and are capable of facilitating joint attention with humans. It some cases, their social skills, at least in terms of communication with humans, surpasses those even of chimpanzees.
Also, impressively, domestic dogs tend to perform particularly well in theory of mind experiments. The problem is that the experimental participants in these studies could potentially be responding to other sorts of contextual social or environmental cues when succeeding at theory of mind tasks, rather than relying on theory of mind skills per se. Ever the empiricists, some also argue that associative learning, rather then an innate theory of mind module, could account for dogs' apparent theory of mind skills. If either of these sorts of arguments were indeed the case, then theory of mind would not strictly be necessary to explain these sorts of complex behaviors.
The best sorts of experimental designs to use in non-human animal theory of mind tasks derive from what I call the "Hare Task." The Hare Task was originally designed for chimpanzees, and is in essence a food competition task. Two chimpanzees, one dominant and one subordinate, are placed at opposite ends of the testing area. Between them are two barriers, one clear (like a window), and one opaque. Just behind each of the barriers, on the side of the subordinate chimp, is a piece of food. In typical interactions, the dominant chimp always has first access to the food. However, the dominant individual can only see the food behind the clear barrier, while the subordinate individual can see both pieces of food.
The set-up looks something like this (source):
The idea is that if the subordinate chimpanzee has a theory of mind - if he (1) knows what the dominant individual does and does not see, and (2) assumes that the behavior of the dominant individual will be consistent with that knowledge - then the subordinate chimp should immediately retrieve the food behind the opaque barrier, and leave the food behind the clear barrier to the dominant chimp.
This sort of task can be easily modified to address slightly different questions for different animals, and recently in the journal Learning and Behavior, psychological scientist Monique Udell and colleagues from the University of Florida, Gainesville, have modified the Hare task to ask if domestic dogs can take the visual perspective of humans. Given that domestic dogs tend to do well on theory of mind tasks, Udell wanted to know if their success emerges due to a theory of mind, or whether their success can be explained by learning processes (such as classical or operant conditioning).
More specifically, some have argued that human-like social skills in dogs are the result of selection through the process of domestication, even if as a correlated by-product of the selection for or against something else. If these social skills are the result of domestication, then they are not simply the result of experience or learning. If this is true, Udell reasoned, then "all healthy populations of domestic dogs should be expected to outperform non-domesticated canids on human attentional-state tasks. Furthermore, this should hold true independent of the age, condition, home environment, or experience level of the dog under test."
In order to investigate this question, Udell tested the ability of three different groups of canids, each of which varied on evolutionary origins or developmental experiments: pet dogs, shelter dogs, and human-reared wolves. All pets dogs were brought into the lab by their owners. The researchers were careful to exclude any shelter dogs that were owner-surrenders, and only tested strays who were comfortable around humans, but clearly had significantly fewer social experiences. The human-reared wolves were from Wolf Park, in Battle Ground, Indiana.
If dogs' success at theory of mind tasks is the result of domestication, then both groups of dogs should outperform wolves, regardless of experience. However, if dogs' success is the result of experience or learning, then the pet dogs should outperform the shelter dogs, and the human-reared wolves might outperform the shelter dogs as well.
Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...... Read more »
Udell MA, Dorey NR, & Wynne CD. (2011) Can your dog read your mind? Understanding the causes of canine perspective taking. Learning . PMID: 21643852
Hare B, Call J, & Tomasello M. (2001) Do chimpanzees know what conspecifics know?. Animal behaviour, 61(1), 139-151. PMID: 11170704
- May 12, 2011
- 11:30 AM
- 1,041 views
Is Pedagogy Specific to Humans? Teaching in the Animal World
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
Human infants have one important job during the first years of life, and that is to learn about the world and their culture from their parents and other caregivers. But what is learning? I've previously written that Hungarian developmental psychologists Gergely and Csibra have defined learning as the acquisition of new, generalizable knowledge that can later be used within a new context. Further, they have posited that evolution has prepared humans to learn generalizable knowledge from their caregivers. They proposed an elegant hypothesis: that a specialized innate pedagogy mechanism - called the pedagogical learning stance - is in place that allows an infant to retain generic information. This means that they are able to learn information in a given instructional setting, that they can later apply to wide range of potential new situations.
This sort of cognitive system requires at least three things. First, the learner must understand the communicative intent of the teacher via ostensive cues. One such cue for humans is the use (by a parent or teacher) of infant-directed speech, or baby-talk. Second, the teacher and learner must be able to jointly use referential signals, such as eyegaze and pointing, in order to facilitate joint attention. Third, the learner must be able to understand the information content of the pedagogical interaction; that is, they must realize that they are getting relevant information for the given task.
There is good evidence that humans do, indeed, have innate pedagogy. But Gergely and Csibra take their claim a bit further. They claim: (1) that natural pedagogy is human-specific, (2) that natural pedagogy is universal among human cultures, and (3) that this sort of human social communication was explicitly selected for in evolution, rather than having emerged as a by-product of some other selection.
The remaining posts in this series on pedagogy will deal separately with each of these three claims. Today, we'll ask if pedagogy is human-specific, or if it is possible that it is shared with other animals.
Pedagogy is, in its simplest form, a form of social learning that occurs via communication between two (or more) individuals, which has as its outcome the transfer of knowledge or skills. There are abundant cases of both social learning and of communication in non-human animals, of course. Are there ever any cases where social learning and communication combine in any other species that allows for knowledge transfer similar to human teaching? The short answer is: no. But let's examine this in some more depth.
Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...... Read more »
Csibra G, & Gergely G. (2011) Natural pedagogy as evolutionary adaptation. Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 366(1567), 1149-57. PMID: 21357237
Csibra, G., & Gergely, G. (2009) Natural pedagogy. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 13(4), 148-153. DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2009.01.005
- May 9, 2011
- 04:34 PM
- 927 views
Feeling Down? Science Says Go Shopping (But Use Credit)
by Jason Goldman in The Thoughtful Animal
My latest piece for LAist just went up:
Retail therapy: It's the answer for almost any problem. Girlfriend broke up with you? Didn't get that promotion? Buy yourself something pretty. People like to shop, especially for high-status items, when they're feeling down. Decades of research has indicated that when a key feature of one's identity is threatened - such as by being passed over for a promotion or being dumped by a former lover - people turn to things. Possessions can allow us to signal our awesomeness to others. And if others think we're awesome, then we just might begin to remember just how awesome we are in the first place.
But parting with cash is also a painful process, so what gives? In a new paper in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, researchers Niro Sivanathan of the London Business School and Nathan Pettit of Cornell University describe how they think people resolve this conflict...
Read the rest over at LAist.
Nathan C. Pettit, & Niro Sivanathan (2011). The Plastic Trap: Self-Threat Drives Credit Usage and Status Consumption Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2 (2), 146-153 : 10.1177/1948550610385138
The original journal article is available free for a limited time. Read the comments on this post...... Read more »
Nathan C. Pettit, & Niro Sivanathan. (2011) The Plastic Trap: Self-Threat Drives Credit Usage and Status Consumption . Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2(2), 146-153. info:/10.1177/1948550610385138
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